Abstract
Expansion of polyglutamine (pQ) chain by expanded CAG repeat causes dominantly inherited neurodegeneration such as Huntington disease, dentatorubral-pallidoluysian atrophy (DRPLA), and numbers of other spinocerebellar ataxias. Expanded pQ disrupts the stability of the pQ-harboring protein and increases its susceptibility to aggregation. Aggregated pQ protein is recognized by the ubiquitin proteasome system, and the enzyme ubiquitin ligase covalently attaches ubiquitin, which serves as a degradation signal by the proteasome. However, accumulation of the aggregated proteins in the diseased brain suggests insufficient degradation machinery. Ubiquitin has several functionally related proteins that are similarly attached to target proteins through its C terminus glycine residue. They are called ubiquitin-like molecules, and some of them are similarly related to the protein degradation pathway. One of the ubiquitin-like molecules, FAT10, is known to accelerate protein degradation through a ubiquitin-independent manner, but its role in pQ aggregate degradation is completely unknown. Thus we investigated its role in a Huntington disease cellular model and found that FAT10 molecules were covalently attached to huntingtin through their C terminus glycine. FAT10 binds preferably to huntingtin with a short pQ chain and completely aggregated huntingtin was FAT10-negative. In addition, ataxin-1,3 and DRPLA proteins were both positive for FAT10, and aggregation enhancement was observed upon FAT10 knockdown. These findings were similar to those for huntingtin. Our new finding will provide a new role for FAT10 in the pathogenesis of polyglutamine diseases.
Highlights
Accumulation of aggregated proteins is one of the key events in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders [1]
A few ubls have been reported to act as degradation signals independent of ubiquitin [7]. ubl function is thought to be essential for cellular homeostasis, and ubl dysfunction plays an important role in cancer genesis [8], viral diseases [9], cardiovascular diseases [10], and neurodegeneration
We pulled down FLAGFAT10 from the lysate and confirmed the binding between two molecules. In both FAT10 and in FAT10⌬GG, the GFP-immunoprecipitated fraction contained FLAG-positive low molecular weight bands and supposedly non-covalently bound FAT10. This band was present when GFP alone was cotransfected with FAT10, which suggests that overexpressed FAT10 can bind covalently to Htt-exon-1 and non-covalently to GFP-Htt-exon-1
Summary
Accumulation of aggregated proteins is one of the key events in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders [1]. FAT10 clearly showed FLAG-positive bands that were larger in molecular weight than the original Htt-exon-1 (Fig. 1A). This band was present when GFP alone was cotransfected with FAT10 (supplemental Fig. S1A), which suggests that overexpressed FAT10 can bind covalently to Htt-exon-1 and non-covalently to GFP-Htt-exon-1.
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